Important Plants for Sharp-tailed Grouse

Generally speaking, grassland grouse are not the most adaptable critters. Both prairie chicken species need large expanses of grassland, while sage grouse must have large expanses of sagebrush to thrive. The one exception to this rule is the sharp-tailed grouse. 

While generally considered a grassland species, sharpies range from the shrub-scrub grasslands in Wisconsin through the vast prairies of the northern U.S. Great Plains and Canada, culminating in the shrublands of Alaska. That’s a huge geographic range, encompassing a wide variety of habitats, meaning there are lots of plants that are important to sharptails. That said, some plants stand out above all others, and they are found and utilized across most of this bird’s vast range.